


valedictory

by gracieminabox



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 13:12:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9386768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracieminabox/pseuds/gracieminabox
Summary: Starfleet Operating Protocol for Officers and Cadets, Section 11, Subsection 4, Item 20: All officers and Academy cadets shall, at the commencement of each Terran year, provide Starfleet with updated demographic information, including comm information, place of residence, and next of kin’s contact information.Section 11, Subsection 4, Item 21: All officers and Academy cadets shall provide contact information for a secondary next of kin. In the event that one’s primary next of kin dies prior to the conclusion of the Terran year for which the primary next of kin is listed, the secondary next of kin shall be promoted to primary next of kin status for the duration of that Terran year. In such an event, the secondary next of kin shall be notified of this promotion by the Starfleet Office of Personnel.





	

_**Starfleet Operating Protocol for Officers and Cadets, Section 11, Subsection 4, Item 20:** All officers and Academy cadets shall, at the commencement of each Terran year, provide Starfleet with updated demographic information, including comm information, place of residence, and next of kin’s contact information._

_**Section 11, Subsection 4, Item 21:** All officers and Academy cadets shall provide contact information for a secondary next of kin. In the event that one’s primary next of kin dies prior to the conclusion of the Terran year for which the primary next of kin is listed, the secondary next of kin shall be promoted to primary next of kin status for the duration of that Terran year. In such an event, the secondary next of kin shall be notified of this promotion by the Starfleet Office of Personnel._

~

It was a chaotic day. Christine, bless her good and decent soul, had had the forethought to put a cup of coffee on Leonard’s desk before she started her weekly meeting with the nursing staff - but that act of kindness was in vain. Instead of having a few blissful moments of caffeinated catch-up, Leonard instead came into a medbay swarming with redshirts, all suffering some degree of minor burns, chemical inhalation, or bumps on the head after a frayed connector caused a coolant leak in engineering.

“Good morning!” Christine said with patently false cheer, not looking up from wrapping a crewman’s hand in gauze. “Welcome to hell!”

“Dammit,” Leonard intoned.

Dealing with that catastrophe took up his entire morning. The afternoon was no better.

First Sulu came in with a badly swollen right hand - exposure to a secretion from some kind of damned alien plant he was nursing back to health in the botany lab, Leonard suspected. Then came three science division ensigns, all with furtive eyes and suspiciously similar genital symptoms, giving Leonard flashbacks to dumbass cadets at the Academy clinic. He treated all three to the patented McCoy combination of a swift hypo to the carotid and an STI lecture guaranteed to make them turn three shades paler. Once they’d been dismissed, Leonard found himself having to relieve Uhura of duty for forty-eight hours, along with anyone else who might’ve been in the rec room on Monday night, after he discovered the pattern in people streaming steadily through his doors with violent GI symptoms.

The worst by far, though, was at the end of the shift, when Leonard watched Christine’s face fall solemn and sober over her tricorder as she scanned the belly of Ensign Metcalfe. Christine handed the tricorder over, and Leonard sighed internally, before doing his least favorite part of the job, telling Ensign Metcalfe that he was so sorry, that she didn’t do anything wrong, that these things just happen sometimes, that they could try again in a couple of months. The poor woman’s deep, wracking sobs echoed around the walls of the medbay as he gave her some privacy to call her wife, then finally, for the first time that day, went into his office.

The coffee Christine had left for him still sat forlornly on his desk, gone tepid with the day.

“Well, today sucked,” Christine said lowly from behind him, rolling her head and cracking her neck. “Paperwork’s done on the engineering snafu from this morning. You want me to polish off the documentation on Metcalfe?”

Leonard shook his head. “Nah, I’ll do it. You’ve been here longer than me. Go on, get some rest. See you in the morning.”

Christine smiled, obviously tired, and nodded before heading out. Leonard moved around his desk to start the paperwork when he saw the indicator light on his terminal blinking. He had a new message.

From the Starfleet Office of Personnel. _Odd._

_Subject: Change in Next of Kin Status_

For the briefest of moments, Leonard thought he was getting this message because something had happened to his own next of kin, Joanna, and all the blood in his veins turned to ice. Mercifully, after only a few seconds, his rational brain kicked in and reminded him that, while Jocelyn may have been a goddamn harpy hellbent on making his life miserable, even she wasn’t such a cold-hearted snake as to let the ‘Fleet tell him something had happened to his baby.

Leonard opened the message, and then his heart plummeted to his feet.

Shutting down his terminal, completely forgetting about the paperwork he had to complete, Leonard walked out of the office. Beta shift had started; he could see the top of Geoff M’Benga’s head over the privacy curtain surrounding where he’d left Metcalfe a few moments ago. Quietly and quickly, Leonard made his way down the hall to his quarters, picking up an essential supply, before picking the turbolift up to Deck Four, turning left, then right, until he reached his intended door and chimed for entrance.

Nothing.

Leonard chimed again, and again, was met by silence.

“Jim, it’s Leonard,” he called softly through the door.

More silence, but this time, the doors parted.

Jim was on his couch, still in uniform, leaning back with his knees pulled up. One elbow was resting on the back of the couch, hand in a loose fist at his chin. He was bathed only in the vaguely blue light coming from his open terminal on the coffee table. He didn’t look up when Leonard entered the room.

Leonard sighed, then walked over and sat next to Jim, setting two lowball glasses on the coffee table and pouring a few fingers of bourbon into each. Jim automatically shifted position, sitting up next to Leonard as he poured.

“How’d you find out?” Jim asked. His voice sounded raw with disuse and pain.

“Personnel office,” Leonard answered. “I’m your new next of kin.”

Jim nodded absently. “Right,” he whispered. “Forgot they did that.”

Leonard picked up his glass and motioned to Jim, who did likewise. They clinked glasses, then drank in unison. While Leonard poured another drink for them both, Jim began to speak.

“She used to call me Jamie,” he said softly. “When I was little. When my granddad Jim was alive. I hated being called Jimmy, but she said two Jims in a room was liable to burn the house down. So she picked Jamie.”

Leonard laughed a little at that. “Smart woman.”

“When I was about three, I wanted to be a black-eyed pea for Halloween,” Jim continued. “Don’t ask me why; I have no idea. Sam was being a cowboy like a normal fucking kid, but I just had to be different.” Jim took a swig of his drink. “She _hated_ to sew. She hated any kind of craft. If it was stereotypically feminine, she wanted nothing to do with it. Rebellion, I think, but she also just had no talent for it. But damned if she didn’t go out and get a bunch of tan and black fabric and figure out how to make me a goddamn black-eyed pea.”

Leonard smiled at Jim fondly. “Please tell me you have holos of that.”

Jim smiled. “I do, somewhere around here.” His smile faded, and it sounded like his voice closed off. “I spent _so long_ being angry with her. Angry about Frank, angry about Tarsus, angry about her not being there when I needed her so badly. Just…angry.”

“You had every reason to be angry.”

“Most of that shit was ancient history. I could’ve just…I don’t know, pushed through it, gotten over it, just for her sake. What if I’d gotten over it?”

“You don’t just _get over_ this kinda stuff, Jim,” Leonard countered gently, “especially not for somebody else’s sake. Your anger’s totally valid.”

Jim quieted, swirling his bourbon in his glass. “Does it mean I love her less?”

Leonard turned to Jim, facing him head on. “Of course not,” he said firmly. “You can be madder than a hornet’s nest at somebody and still love them to the ends of the universe.” Leonard snickered into his glass. “In fact, based on personal experience, I’d venture to say there’s a direct correlation between the two.”

Jim raked a hand through his hair. “I don’t know how to feel right now,” he admitted. 

“That’s okay,” Leonard said. “That’s allowed. That’s healthy.”

“Makes me feel like a bad son.”

“You’re a lot of things, but that’s not one of ‘em,” Leonard said confidently. “Your relationship with her was complicated. Your relationship with her is _still_ complicated. Doesn’t make you a bad son.”

Jim looked up at Leonard; his eyes were huge and nearly navy blue in the dim blue light of his terminal. “Bones, when does it stop feeling so… _strange?”_

Leonard smiled sadly. “I’ll letcha know when I get there.”

They both looked away, their gazes turning in unison toward the terminal, the message from Starfleet HQ offering Captain James T. Kirk their deepest condolences on the loss of Commander Winona D. Kirk, killed in an engineering accident while her ship patrolled the Alpha-Gamma Quadrant border.

“I’m an orphan,” Jim said, his voice sounding very, very small, breaking Leonard’s heart a little bit. “Dad’s gone. Sam’s gone. Now Mom’s gone. All my grandparents are gone. I’m it. The last Kirk.” Leonard noticed Jim’s hand starting to tremble and took the glass of whiskey out of it. “Even Frank’s gone, goddammit. And…and Pike…I mean, I know he wasn’t…he wasn’t…my whole family’s gone…” He trailed off, his voice tightening into nothingness.

As tactile a person as Jim was, he and Leonard did not have the most demonstrative of friendships. It was a conscious thing, borne of a healthy fear of the thread of actively ignored tension that stretched between them. They rarely came into physical contact, and love was best expressed by way of a snarky word and a hypospray to the neck. But all that seemed to dissolve as Leonard wrapped an arm around Jim and pulled him in close, feeling him sag against Leonard’s chest, shuddering a little but not allowing himself to succumb to full-on sobs. Jim smelled of apples and aftershave, and Leonard allowed himself to get lost in it for the length of a breath before coming back to himself.

“I’m your next of kin, remember?” Leonard murmured into Jim’s hair. “ _I’m_ your family now. And you’ll have a _hell_ of a time getting rid of me, kid. If you haven’t scared my ass off by now, then you’re stuck with me for life.”

It occurred to Leonard that maybe they’d actually been family for the entire fifteen years they’d known each other. Maybe, even without the label, they became that to one another on a shuttle out of Riverside, smelling of barroom and booze.

(The same thought occurred to Jim at the same moment, though neither would ever know it.)

Keeping his arm around Jim, Leonard poured them both one more drink, handing Jim his when he leaned back on the couch. Leonard toasted his glass. “To Winona.”

Jim clinked his glass to Leonard’s. “To Winona.”


End file.
